Transfer orders and WMS-owned on-hand
When a warehouse group is configured to receive stock from an external WMS or 3PL integration, that feed sets on-hand absolutely each time it syncs — it tells Luminous "this warehouse now has X units" rather than "subtract Y units." The physical movement of a transfer order is therefore already reflected the next time the feed syncs.
If Luminous also applied its own on-hand deduction when you marked the transfer order as shipped, the same units would be removed twice, causing on-hand to go sharply negative.
What Luminous does now
For a transfer order whose source warehouse group meets all three of these conditions, Luminous skips its own on-hand deduction and lets the WMS feed remain the authority:
- Externally managed — the warehouse group has "Externally Managed" enabled with stock pulling turned on.
- Live integration account — the group is connected to an active (non-retired) WMS or OMS integration account.
- Non-EDI account — the integration is not an EDI 846 account (EDI 846 keeps inventory current through a different mechanism and does not use the stock-pull path).
When all three conditions are met, Luminous still:
- Releases the pending reservation created when the transfer order was posted, so Available inventory updates correctly.
- Preserves the shipment record, order status, and invoicing — nothing visible to the order changes.
The on-hand number itself is then corrected by the next WMS sync, just as it would be for any other movement the WMS records.
This behavior must be enabled for your account. If you're not seeing the skip-and-release behavior described above for a WMS-managed transfer order, contact Luminous support to confirm it's active for your tenant.
When Luminous still deducts on-hand normally
The skip applies only to WMS-managed transfer orders. All of the following cases continue to deduct on-hand as usual:
| Scenario | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Regular sales order (non-transfer), any warehouse | Normal on-hand deduction |
| Transfer order at a Luminous-managed warehouse (no external WMS) | Normal on-hand deduction — the shipment is the only record of the movement |
| Transfer order picked via a Luminous picklist | Normal on-hand deduction at the picked location |
| WMS-managed group whose integration account has been deactivated | Normal on-hand deduction — no feed is running, so Luminous is the authority |
| WMS-managed group connected via EDI 846 | Normal on-hand deduction — EDI 846 is a separate inventory-update path |
If on-hand looks wrong after a transfer shipment
- On-hand didn't move at all after shipping — This is expected for WMS-managed warehouses. Wait for the next WMS sync; the feed will update the count to reflect the physical movement.
- On-hand went sharply negative — This was the bug that has now been corrected. If you see residual negative values from before the fix was applied, contact support to run the inventory repair.
- Pending wasn't released — If Available did not improve after shipping, check that the transfer order's fulfillment channel is not a Sales Channel type (Sales Channel orders do not reserve pending inventory and therefore have nothing to release).